From the comments, tweets, and emails I got on yesterday’s post My Travels In Digital Photo Organizing Hellit appears I have a common problem. Basically, the existing photo approaches – in general – have created a massive mess. Apple and Google have just made this worse by continuously changing their underlying tools and approaches.

Buried deep in the comments was one from Darla DeMorrow. And it’s a gem.

“Hey, Brad. You’ve got a better handle on this situation than the average bear, but it’s still tricky, no matter what platform you use. And guaranteed it will change tomorrow, which makes us all crazy. But I’ve found a solution that I can recommend to my clients, who depend on www.APPO.org professionals like me to keep them sane. Check out www.Mylio.com. It’s a cloud-enabled service (not cloud-based) that allows you to organize in your own space, sync across devices, and only store in their cloud if you want to. It’s platform independent, sort of like the Evernote of photo organizing. You can throw stuff in the photo pile (making you happy), and it will automatically organize, to a point, making Amy happy. I’m happy to talk with you if you want to know more. You can find me online.”

I’ve been playing with Mylio for about 90 minutes on my Mac and iPhone. So far it is amazing – basically what I was looking for when I started this journey.

All my photos are still in Dropbox. I can access them, move them around, edit them, do whatever I want from a beautiful UX. Amy will be able to run this app on her Mac independently but see the same photo store and do whatever she wants. There are numerous backup options that preserve the directory structure and do NOT force me to use the cloud. I can sync with all my devices seamlessly. It knows how to import stuff like my Facebook photos, Aperture, and iPhoto. It works with Lightroom. It’s extremely fast.

It’s not free but I’m happy to pay for something that actually works. Thanks Darla!